


By the Pricking of My Thumbs

by sugarlessgum



Series: Queliot Week 2019 [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Hedge Witches, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Temporary Character Death, it's a previous timeline so you know the drill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 00:17:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19284184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarlessgum/pseuds/sugarlessgum
Summary: They're sitting in the safe house, trying to create their own variations on a basic lock picking spell, when the door bursts open. A man who looks like he walked straight out of an Oscar Wilde production comes stumbling in, wrestling with a large cardboard box. Pete storms down to stop him from going any further."What are you doing here, Eliot?"The man — Eliot — manages to maintain an air of cool, condescending indifference despite whatever he has in the box fighting desperately to get out."The strangest thing happened. We went looking for a book in our library the other day and couldn't find it anywhere. You haven't seen it have you, Pete?"---In Timeline 9, none of them make it to Brakebills.





	By the Pricking of My Thumbs

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my (late oops) entry for Queliot Week Day 2: Hedge Witches
> 
> A lot of this fic was inspired by Julia's story in _The Magician King._ This is set in a previous timeline, which means it obviously doesn't end well. I promise the rest of my Queliot Week stories have happier endings.

Julia notices something is wrong first.

After Quentin's disaster of a Yale interview that never was, he follows Julia to the library. They stay there all night, catching up on school work and trying to process what had happened that afternoon. So it's strange, very strange, when Julia wakes up the next morning to find a jagged cut running down the length of her forearm.

She goes to Quentin immediately and together they chip away at their memory. They catch glimpses behind each crack — an impossibly warm afternoon, a crowded exam room,  _magic_. It was impossible. But the more they poke at their first set of memories, the less they make sense.

They become obsessed. They hole themselves away inside Julia's apartment, looking through every book, website, and chatroom with even the faintest possibility of holding answers. James tries for weeks to drag them out of their own heads. He even calls in Julia's sister to deliver an ultimatum. Julia changes the locks on the apartment and stops answering their phone calls.

Finally, finally, finally, they find something real.

It isn't much. Just a few lines in a language they don't recognize, paired with a drawing of a hand contorted in an odd gesture. They stay up all night bending their fingers into the right shape, tripping over foreign syllables. It takes them until sunrise. And then: sparks fly from their fingertips in short, crazed bursts.

"We did it," Quentin says, staring at his still-glowing fingers. "Jules... Fuck. We did it."

 

Quentin doesn't know how Pete found them, or how they caught Marina's attention in the first place. He and Julia out for drinks one night when Julia disappears a little too long for the bathroom. She returns shellshocked and angry, with an invitation.

The next thing they know, they're locked in a freezer with a cadaver and a girl who won't stop crying. And then the crying girl completely flips the script on them. She shows off an armful of tattoos Quentin is sure would be impressive if he knew what they were supposed to mean.

They spend a few weeks in Marina's safe house and Julia blows through the spell binder in half that time. Quentin's sure she would've left to find another safe house already if she weren't waiting for Quentin to catch up.

But now they've both made their way through all the material and Marina has nothing else to offer. There are rumors among the other hedges in their group that her source had been spirited away by another safe house. Something about a student at Brakebills — which Quentin and Julia learn is the impossible school they'd failed out of — paying off a debt her mother owed Marina. But then her mother died under mysterious, Marina-related circumstances and the source was expelled and immediately snatched up by another group of hedges.

They're sitting in the safe house, trying to create their own variations on a basic lock picking spell, when the door bursts open. A man who looks like he walked straight out of an Oscar Wilde production comes stumbling in, wrestling with a large cardboard box. Pete storms down to stop him from going any further.

"What are you doing here, Eliot?"

The man — Eliot — manages to maintain an air of cool, condescending indifference despite whatever he has in the box fighting desperately to get out.

"The strangest thing happened. We went looking for a book in our library the other day and couldn't find it anywhere. You haven't seen it have you, Pete?"

"We don't have your stupid book." As soon as he says it, the door to Marina's office bangs open and a book soars into the room, flapping its pages like wings. The thing in Eliot's box finally breaks free and Quentin sees a matching book fly out to meet its partner. They chase each other around the room, crashing into lights and tables, before finally landing and– Oh. That's... new.

Eliot simply turns back to Pete with a single eyebrow raised, looking immensely satisfied.

"We figured you owed us that much," Pete now justifies. "Considering you stole Kady from us."

"We didn't 'steal' anyone. Unlike Marina, we don't trade in owning people."

Eliot turns on his heel, heading to collect his books off the floor. Soon, he's being escorted from the building, box in hand. It only takes a second of deliberation before Quentin is chasing after him.

"Wait," he calls out once they're both through the door. Eliot turns, eyeing Quentin cautiously. "Your safe house. You know more than Marina, don't you?"

They must have something valuable if she's pilfering through their magic library. Eliot watches him a few more moments before a slow, sly grin takes over his face.

"We certainly think so."

"My friend Julia and I... There's nothing for us here."

Eliot hums and takes a step closer.

"You don't look like the usual junkie type." Quentin bristles at that.

"I'm not a junkie, I just love magic. So does Julia. So much that we fought through a memory wipe to find it." Eliot seems taken off guard by that, blinking in surprise.

"You broke through a memory spell on your own? Just, out of pure determination and stubbornness?" There's a pause as Eliot visibly reevaluates him. "Now that's interesting. What's your name?"

"Quentin. Coldwater." Eliot steps closer again, the only distance between them now the box he still holds.

"Quentin..." There's a beat as they both take each other in.

"Well," Eliot says finally. "I know where to find you."

With that, he walks away and Quentin is left standing alone in the alley.

 

Days pass without any word from Eliot and Quentin is sure his plea in the alley had been for nothing. He and Julia start wandering the city in search of other safe houses, pressuring information out of Pete whenever possible. They're coming home from an unsuccessful visit with a group of amateur hedges when they find a woman waiting for them in their living room.

She has long, dark hair and she's dressed like an avant-garde businesswoman. She's sitting in one of their armchairs looking incredibly bored, like she hadn't just broken into their apartment and was instead sitting through an especially dull lunch meeting.

"Who the fuck are you?" Julia demands. "And how did you get in here?"

"It wasn't exactly hard," the woman drawls. "You don't even have any wards up. Marina really is a stingy bitch with her spells, isn't she? It's no wonder you need us."

"Eliot sent you," Quentin guesses. She cuts him a look somewhere between annoyed and amused.

"First thing you should know if we're going to work together: I'm the one who does the sending. But yes, Eliot did tell me about you. Something about a high strung hedge with a pretty face and an aversion to memory charms."

"Well, that's fascinating," says Julia. "But you never answered my question. Who the fuck are you?"

The woman rises from her chair and crosses the room. There's something effortlessly regal about her gait and she has a sharp, predatory look in her eye. Quentin can understand why Marina has been losing so much ground to these hedges if this is who she has to contend with.

"My name is Margo Hanson. Eliot and I run a safe house Upstate. There's only a handful of us. We like to emphasize quality over quantity."

Quentin and Julia take a moment for a silent conversation, the kind mastered after a lifetime of friendship. They turn back to Margo in sync.

"Is this an invitation then?" Quentin asks.

"This was an interview.  _This,_ " Margo pulls a small white card from her blazer pocket, "is the invitation." She walks past them to the apartment door, barely pausing long enough to press the card into Quentin's hands.

"See you soon." And then she's gone.

The card has only two words written on it:  _Burn This._

 

Quentin and Julia spend a day and a half weighing the pros and cons of following Margo's directions. It doesn't take much to convince Julia. She's just as desperate for magic as Quentin is. They place the card in a metal bowl, using an unnecessarily complicated charm to set it ablaze. It goes up in a flash of orange and violet, pulsing out a message in Morse code.

The message turns out to be coordinates to a neglected community garden in Brooklyn. They find a graffiti seven-pointed star on the sidewalk in front of some tangled hedges. Quentin looks at Julia, shrugs, and walks into the hedge.

He emerges in the middle of a vibrant garden. He can see a large cottage in the distance. Julia stumbles out soon after him and they make their way towards the cottage together. As they get closer, Quentin can see Eliot lounging on a short garden wall, smoking a cigarette. Eliot hops down from the wall as they approach.

"You're late," he says, then stretches out his arms dramatically. "Welcome home."

 

Margo wasn't kidding when she told them they prefer quality over quantity. The Cottage was twice the size of Marina's safe house with a third of the members.

They meet Kady first. She had been Marina's lost informant, a former student at Brakebills. She was expelled after her mother's death, when the Dean discovered she'd been stealing from the campus. Quentin soon learns that all of the Cottage's residents had some sort of relationship with Brakebills at one point or another.

Eliot and Margo had been expelled during their first year, after a party they threw resulted in the loss of a few irreplaceable books from their dormitory's private library.

Kady's boyfriend Penny — Quentin's broken memory provides an image of them sitting side by side during the entrance exam — is a psychic who dropped out a few weeks into the semester when he learned Brakebills couldn't do anything to quiet the host of voices in his head.

Quiet, skittish Alice had been raised by magicians, who were Brakebills alums themselves, but she had never been invited to take the exam. It's several weeks before Quentin learns her brother had also attended Brakebills, had died there, and she never forgave them for hiding the truth of what happened from her.

"Alice is the gracious benefactor of most of our library," Eliot explains during their tour of the Cottage. "She stole a ton of Mommy and Daddy's shit before she ran away from home."

"She'll be the one in charge of powering you up," Margo says. "Streamlining you to level two hundred fifty."

So they meet with Alice in the Cottage's large study. She has them run through every spell they learned with Marina, one after the other. If one of them screws up, she has them both start from the beginning. Once they've successfully run the whole circuit start to finish, Alice begins their painstaking education.

For several weeks, the three of them cloister themselves away in the study after breakfast, not leaving until dinner. They practice every spell she gives them until it's perfect, then they're thrown immediately into the next one.

Quentin's days are devoted to learning magic, but his nights belong to Eliot.

His first night at the Cottage was a sleepless one. He spent hours fruitlessly trying to sleep in his new, spacious bedroom. Around 2 A.M. he finally gave in and started to wander. He found Eliot in the den, working his way through a bottle of wine in front of the fireplace.

It becomes a habit after that. Quentin drops any pretense of trying to sleep and goes straight to Eliot. They sit in front of the fire or out under the stars, sharing drinks and cigarettes and secrets. Quentin tells him about being hospitalized. How the  _Fillory and Further_ series saved his life. That he doesn't know where he'd be now if he hadn't found magic when he did. In turn, Eliot confesses he grew up in rural Indiana. His first experience with magic had been a horror story. He'd pushed a bully in front of a bus and thrown his entire world off kilter.

"Magic has pretty much fucked all of us upside down and sideways," Eliot says. "Alice's brother is dead. So is Kady's mom. Penny's losing his mind a little bit every day." He pauses to down the rest of his drink. "That's why we're here, you know? We're trying to fall back in love with magic. Find the good in it. That's what's so incredible about you, Q. You don't need to be convinced. You just believe in magic, plain and simple."

 

They reach level two hundred fifty without much fanfare. One day, he and Julia are working out a new spell in the study. And then it's just. Over.

"Congratulations," Alices says. "You're finished."

"What's next?"

"Nothing."

"What do you mean, nothing?" Julia asks. "This can't be all there is."

"Oh, there's more spells. Obviously. But you have all the building blocks now. From here you can learn anything, even create your own spells. We're finished." She shuts the spell binder with a clear finality.

Kady updates their tattoos for what is presumably the last time. They throw a group dinner that night to celebrate. The seven of them gather in the dining room, an elaborate feast spread out on the table. It's here Quentin learns that while he and Julia had been slogging through their magical education, the rest of the group had been working on a secret project.

"Rest up tonight," Margo says after dinner. "Tomorrow the real work begins."

Eliot shows up at his bedroom door that night with a bottle of wine. They pour themselves a few glasses, which are quickly forgotten in favor of Eliot slowly fucking Quentin into the mattress.

 

For the first month and a half of Quentin's stay, the Cottage had a particular routine. Everyone in the house would wander into the kitchen for breakfast together. Then, once the morning socializing was over and the mess was cleared, they split into two groups. Quentin, Julia, and Alice would go to the study while everyone else went to the library to do God only knew what.

The morning after they leveled up for the last time, Quentin and Julia finally join the library group.

Quentin has seen the library before, of course. It had been the longest stop on their welcome tour. He and Julia had spent nearly an hour scanning its shelves and admiring the collection of books and maps before Eliot finally dragged them on to the rest of the Cottage.

The library is the largest room in the house, covered wall to wall in bookshelves. There are armchairs and couches scattered around the room and a window alcove decked out with throw pillows. In the center stands a long wooden table encircled by sturdy, antique chairs.

Margo sits at the head of the table. There are stacks of books and worn-in notebooks laid out in front of them all.

"Welcome to Project Ganymede," Margo says. She launches into a well-rehearsed speech about magical theory and the source of magic. About how fucked up all their lives are and if they could just crack the code, get to the beating heart of everything and pluck it still-beating from magic's chest, they could find the answers they need. They've been trying for months, going down any and every train of thought to a dozen dead ends. They were getting a little desperate. Turning to previously laughable, insurmountable hypotheses.

"So basically," she finishes. "We're trying to find a god."

"You're trying to find  _God,_ " Julia repeats. She does little to hide the skepticism in her voice.

"We're trying to find  _a_ god. Or a goddess, or even a demigod, whatever."

"Okay," Quentin says. "Okay. How... How exactly do you plan to do that?"

Margo takes one of the thicker notebooks on the table and tosses it in front of Quentin and Julia.

"Kady and Penny have been canvassing the local magical creatures for information. Vampires, lamias, that sort of thing."

"Lamias, of course," Quentin says. "Any dragons?"

"Nah," Penny says. "Dragons are too high maintenance, they don't talk unless you're willing to pay."

Quentin blinks in surprise. Of course dragons are real. Of course they are. That's just totally normal information to discover, no big deal.

"We got a pretty big lead last week," Kady says. "We were waiting on you two before we went any further."

Julia flips the notebook to the most recent entry. There's an image pasted onto the page reminiscent of the pictures of the Virgin Mary Quentin's grandmother decorates her walls with.

"They call her Our Lady Underground," Kady continues. "She seems to be a mid-level fertility and harvest goddess. There's been whispers of her performing miracles around the area as recently as twenty years ago."

"Oh, that recent? Really?" Julia challenges.

"Compared to the other gods, who've been radio silent for millennia now, yeah. That's pretty damn recent."

"Okay, so, what now?" Quentin asks. "Have you found a way to contact her?"

"We're still working on that part," Penny says. "We've spent the past few days trying to track down some hermit claiming to be one of her followers."

There's a heavy silence in the room. It's not hard to sense the utter disbelief radiating from Quentin and Julia. They've seen incredible things these past months, performed impossible acts of magic. But gods...

"Look," Margo says. Her tone is hard but her eyes hold a careful understanding. "You can join us if you want, or you can fuck around the Cottage working on your own little magical dissertations or whatever. You're part of the family now, regardless. We just wanted to give you the chance to help."

Quentin and Julia look at one another. A quest to find a god. As impractical as it is, there's something exciting about it.

When they were children, they had pretended to be Martin and Jane Chatwin, exploring Fillory and going on quests given to them by Ember and Umber. Now was their chance to live out those fantasies, as small as it may be.

"We're in."

 

Julia joins Kady and Penny on their search for the hermit. They're gone at all hours of the day, leaving just before breakfast and trudging home long after the others have gone to bed.

Quentin stays at the Cottage, helping the others research. They go through every pantheon they can think of, looking for ways to contact gods. From Judeo-Christian prophets to Greco-Roman demigods to the Chinese patron deities. Any interaction between gods and men are tracked down, bookmarked, and analyzed to exhaustion.

"Do you actually believe any of this?" Quentin asks one night as he and Eliot lie in bed. "Like, do you think we're actually going to find anything?"

Eliot hums and nudges his face further into the crook of Quentin's neck.

"Honestly? No. I think this is all a waste of time." Quentin pulls back to look at Eliot, surprised.

"Seriously?"

"Mhm. Maybe my strict Christian upbringing has made me cynical, but the idea of any sort of all-powerful deity floating around the universe sounds like bullshit to me."

"Then why are you doing this? You're in the library with us every day, working just as hard as anyone else. Why?"

Eliot rolls onto his back, shrugs.

"What else is there to do? Margo's my best friend. She wants to find a god, I'll help her find a god. And it's less boring than the alternative, anyway."

It's not that different, Quentin supposes, from his own reasons for helping. He still isn't completely convinced any of this will be worth the effort and he suspects at least half the group shares his sentiment. But they still go out, every day, searching for the impossible. Quentin turns onto his side and lays his head on Eliot's shoulder, sighing happily as Eliot's arms wrap around him.

"What about you?" Eliot asks. "Do you believe any of this?"

"I don't know. But I want to."

"Yeah," Eliot says, so softly Quentin almost doesn't hear him. "Me too."

 

They find the hermit.

The field research trio returns earlier than usual one day, while everyone else is sat down for lunch. Julia and Penny look dazed and contemplative, but Kady seems downright radiant. The hermit had apparently performed some kind of miracle on her, cleansed her inner demons or whatever. He'd also told her how to contact Our Lady Underground.

"I don't know," says Penny. "I still think we should be cautious. We have no reason to trust this guy." Kady shakes her head.

"You didn't feel it. Trust me. This is the real deal." Penny and Julia share a look but don't say anything else.

Julia comes down to breakfast the next morning almost in a trance.

"Our Lady sent me a sign last night," she announces to the kitchen. She describes her dream in detail. A beam of light, her hands filling with milk and then coins, Our Lady Underground appearing in her room and urging her to call.

"How do you know this wasn't just a dream?" Eliot asks. Julia cuts him an impatient look.

"I know."

They spend the rest of the day deliberating. They agree that a certain level of precaution is wise, regardless of the choice they make. Alice starts warding the library, though none of them are sure if any ward exists strong enough to slow down a god.

"We aren't doing this until we've taken every protective measure we can," Margo insists. "Even if this really is Our Lady, there's no guarantee that whoever shows up will be who we were calling in the first place."

Penny spends most of the day in bed. The voices have been getting worse the past few days. Louder, angrier, harder to ignore.

"That seems like a bad sign. Like, maybe we shouldn't be doing this," says Quentin.

" _Or_ it's a sign that we should hurry the fuck up," Kady insists. "If anyone would be able to help Penny, it would be a goddess."

So it's decided. They set a day to perform the ritual, choosing the upcoming full moon as thematically appropriate. They prepare the library for the ritual. Cleanse the space, set up protections, push their meeting table against one of the walls for extra space. They study the incantation for days, not wanting to fuck it up when it really counts. The closer they get to the day, the more anxious everyone becomes.

Finally, finally, finally, it's time to make their call.

Everyone gathers in the library, even Penny though he can barely stand on his own. Margo leads the invocation. They keep going until the words start to mean something. Until they actually start believing.

The energy in the room climbs, the hum of magic loud and overbearingly present, building up to a crescendo and then–

Everything is still. At the center of the circle stands a man, wearing a neat gray suit. His face is obscured by a swarm of moths.

They had made a mistake.

Quentin tries to move but he is frozen in place. The only thing he still has control over is his eyes. He glances around the room as best he can, tracking the man's movements.

The man walks around the circle, hands clasped behind his back, whistling cheerily. He examines each member of the group, each of them equally helpless, locked in place. He finally comes to a stop in front of Quentin. He stops whistling, leans in close enough that some of the moths start crawling on Quentin's face.

"Now where have I seen  _you_ before?" the man asks. Quentin doesn't get a chance to answer.

 

"Well. That was an unmitigated disaster." Henry Fogg sits at his desk and pours himself a generous glass of bourbon. "Remind me again why you thought casting them out on their own would make them more prepared to deal with your brother."

Jane Chatwin sits across from him, sipping her own glass. She holds herself with an unbothered composure, but Fogg can see the tired lines around her eyes.

"You underestimate people, Henry. I was a hedge witch myself, you know. Entirely self-taught. I thought they could handle it."

"This has been your highest death count to date. I wouldn't call that 'handling it.'"

"Well, it's not like I could've known they were going to summon him," she says, getting annoyed. "You have to admit, what they accomplished on their own was quite impressive. Perhaps, given more time, they would've actually found a way to stop him."

"Promise me," he says. "Promise me you won't keep them away from Brakebills again. Maybe they could've found a way on their own, but they can't do that if they're not protected. The wards here are strong enough to keep them safe until they figure something out."

"You know I can't promise that, Henry. I have to do whatever it takes, whatever the risk."

Fogg nods and downs his drink in one go. He had known that would be the answer, but he had to try.

"Well," Jane says, rising from her seat. She pulls out a pocket watch and starts fiddling with its crown. "No point in lingering. Time for try number ten. I'll see you in the next loop, Henry."


End file.
